Height was the right word; Mabel had said "four yards high"--and she _was_ four yards high. But she was hardly any thicker than when her height was four feet seven, and the effect was, as Gerald remarked, "wonderfully worm-like." Her clothes had, of course, grown with her, and she looked like a little girl reflected in one of those long bent mirrors at Rosherville Gardens, that make stout people look so happily slender, and slender people so sadly scraggy. She sat down suddenly on the floor, and it was like a four-fold foot-rule folding itself up.
"It's no use sitting there, girl," said Gerald.
[Illustration: SHE SAT DOWN SUDDENLY ON THE FLOOR, AND IT WAS LIKE A FOUR-FOLD FOOT-RULE FOLDING ITSELF UP.]
"I'm not sitting here," retorted Mabel; "I only got down so as to be able to get through the door. It'll have to be hands and knees through most places for me now, I suppose."
"Aren't you hungry?" Jimmy asked suddenly.
"I don't know," said Mabel desolately; "it's--it's such a long way off!"
"Well, I'll scout," said Gerald; "if the coast's clear----"
"Look here," said Mabel, "I think I'd rather be out of doors till it gets dark."
"You _can't_. Some one's certain to see you."
"Not if I go through the yew-hedge," said Mabel. "There's a yew-hedge with a passage along its inside like the box-hedge in 'The Luck of the Vails.'"
"'The Luck of the Vails.' It's a ripping book. It was that book first set me on to hunt for hidden doors in panels and things. If I crept along that on my front, like a serpent--it comes out amongst the rhododendrons, close by the dinosaurus--we could camp there."
"There's tea," said Gerald, who had had no dinner.
"That's just what there isn't," said Jimmy, who had had none either.
"Oh, you _won't_ desert me!" said Mabel. "Look here--I'll write to auntie. She'll give you the things for a picnic, if she's there and awake. If she isn't, one of the maids will."
So she wrote on a leaf of Gerald's invaluable pocket-book:--
"Please may we have some things for a picnic? Gerald will bring them. I would come myself, but I am a little tired. I think I have been growing rather fast.--Your loving niece,
"P.S.--Lots, please, because some of us are very hungry."
It was found difficult, but possible, for Mabel to creep along the tunnel in the yew-hedge. Possible, but slow, so that the three had hardly had time to settle themselves among the rhododendrons and to wonder bitterly what on earth Gerald was up to, to be such a time gone, when he returned, panting under the weight of a covered basket. He dumped it down on the fine grass carpet, groaned, and added, "But it's worth it. Where's our Mabel?"